I am here now to discount to you one possibility of space travel that you believe aliens might be getting here by...and that is speed of light travel (C) or faster than speed of light travel. I am not discounting other methods such as bending of folding space, i will talk about those another time.

Also, i am overlooking the fact that any ship traveling at that speed would not withstand the stress, and also i am overlooking the simple amount of energy it would take to reach these speeds. So, for this example, i will take it as a given that an alien spacecraft is already traveling at or faster than the speed of light.

Now i will ask a question to this matter that most people do not even take into consideration. What would you SEE if you were traveling faster than the speed of light? Lets think about that. Lets say an alien is at the helm of his ship, and looking out the window (which everyone seems to keep telling me these craft have) and is maneuvering about, and suddenly pushes the Faster than Light button and speeds off at that speed. This is what you would see in front of you, a pure blanket of light all in front of you, and total darkness behind you. why?

We are seeing light at this moment one photon at a time from any given direction, some of that light is then reflected off our eye. So you can imagine all the photons that hit your eye each moment as a "layer" of light. But imagine if one was going the speed of light. You would be going so fast that multiple layers of light would reach your eye at the same time, additionally, since you are going faster than light, the light that reaches your eye would not be able to escape it, since it can only reflect at the speed of light, and you are exceeding that, light would simply build up in your eye with no way to escape, just like a blackhole. So all you would see is a blanket of white light from all the layers of light building up upon your eye, and all the light that was trapped within your eye.

Additionally, because of this, if you tried to look around your spaceship from the front of the ship, for instance at the back wall of the room, or someone behind you, you would see nothing but darkness. Since you are traveling at the speed of light, no light would be reflected because the speed would not allow it to do so. Additionally, if you looked out the back window of the ship, it would be all darkness as well, no stars whatsoever. Because the light that was emited from the stars behind you would never be able to catch up with the speed of your ship.

Hopefully i have been able to illustrate the ridiculousness of the claim that craft could ever travel at or faster than light. It would be useless. You wouldnt be able to see in front of you or navigate or even see around your ship. Therefore it is nonsense to believe that aliens could be doing this, the same properties of light apply everywhere. I hope this has been helpful

Don,
The 'impossibility" of infinity speed travel (a better name for it) is based on, unability to see? Well, you are doing some thinking.
That inability to see is a "what if." And that invites more "what if's" to the party.

Should I trot out a stream of just as likely "what if's," what possible effect would they have on you? I don't think they would be influential, so why bother?

Someone could come up with, "well, the ETs shut the windows and don't look out."
But I think it much more to the point that a person would not have any vision, feeling or any other sensation because they would be a wave form at the time and homo sapiens doesn't seem to be able to percieve without a body evident.
And, by the way, the guys who really do the entertaining of the subject of infinity speed travel, do run up senarios of what it would be like if we were doing it in order to get some ideas and senarios on feasibility. The difference between you and them, is that they would like to reach the stars. They would really like to do and are looking for ways instead of looking for how to say it can't be done.

3/16/2004 4:56:09 PM

How do you know this? If you're talking about the THEORY of relativty then you can't say that for sure since it's only a theory. Yes, it's a very valid theory that is still accepted to this day, but you really can't say that you know for sure that an advanced civilization couldn't possibly travel faster than the spped of light because Einstein said so. I'm not saying Einstein is wrong, I have no idea what it would be like to travel at those speeds, but neither do you. The Hubble space telescope has captured images of galaxies expanding faster and faster. Scientists have no idea how this could be happening since gravity should be slowing these galaxies down. Now if these galaxies keep traveling faster then eventually they will exceed the speed of light. Scientists already have stated that after the big bang all the matter in the universe was travelling outward at faster-than-light speeds. So how could this be if light-speed is the limit? You have to realize that as much as we humans think we know, we really have a lot more to learn before we can say we know FOR SURE. If I am wrong Mr. Tago, please give me some info, I'd really like to learn.

lluminati3/16/2004 11:36:06 PM

Don - Who says that they have to have lightspeed in order to travel here?

They could be from our own solar system. Do you know that Jupiter has over 20 moons? Do you know what cryogenics are? Cryogenics is the process of preserving the body through chemicals, and cold temps. Animals on earth can do this. What if they entered a state of hybernation without aging like animals here do in order to reach Earth?

They could set up space stations as quarter point marks every distance or so. Therefore by building these stations they could launch trips into deeper, and deeper space.

We have very little info on most of Jupiters moons and there even may be life on Saturn. How would we know. Until we have taken surface pictures we dont know THAT INTELLIGENT LIFE MAY EXIST IN OUR OWN SOLAR SYSTEM.

They dont have to have lightspeed to be here sir.

OUR scientist even know how to leave our solar-system. By making a craft that lets off nuclear blast as propulsion. In theory most scientist agree that a nuclear driven space shuttle would work.

David 3/17/2004 10:09:26 AM

Mr. Targo,

There is a huge difference between theory and practice. Until it the day comes that it is proven a person can or can't travel that fast, everything is a theory.

The eye example was interesting.......assuming ETs have eyes.

~D

Don Tago3/17/2004 12:07:15 PM

To Mr David and Mr illuminati and anonymous,

Actually, you would be surprised what LITTLE theory there was behind my first post. It was based simply on the speed of light. Einstien talked little, if at all, about what one would SEE traveling at the speed of light. It will well known and widely accepted that there is a speed for light. Light must have a speed. Everything travels thru a medium. Sound travels thru air, and light travels thru space. Space itself is a medium, and this is what gives light is barrier. It is true is different mediums light may have different speeds, but the medium which light travels between stars is space, and that speed thru space is unalterable. There are forces though that are greater than the speed of light, such as stars known as blackholes, which are black because the gravity of that star is so great that light is not allowed to escape. So, to say that the speed of light is a theory is ridiculous. Light does have a set speed. If it moved instantaneously we would look up at space at nite and see things the moment they happened. But we do not, when we look up at the heavens, we are in a sense looking back in time. The light from distant stars takes 1000 sometimes millions of years to reach us. If you want to learn more about these discoveries, read the works of Galileo, Foucault, Maxwell, or Roemer.

As for the anonymous reply about how after the big bang, scientists theorize that things moved faster than light, and how this might have occured. Well, at the time of the big bang, everything in the universe was crunched down to the size of an atom. And outside that atom was nothing. There wasnt even space. Space didnt exist until after the big bang. So when the explosion occured, space was very dense, Not at all like it is now. Space is more or less static now. But when space was condensed in the big band, light could seem to move faster then than it could now across the condensed space. Similarly, if our space we to suddenly dramatically expand, light would seem to slow down.

Mr Illuminati, I never said that there werent other ways for aliens to travel. All i set out to do was prove that they do not travel with faster than light spacecraft. I said that in the very begining of my arguement. Additionally, i think the prospect of intelligent life within our solar system is very improbable. It is true, there are microbes which display the ability to live and extreme colds, and others that can survive at extreme hots. But no organism that displays the tolerance for both extreme colds and hots. This would be the conditions on Venus, Mars, our Moon, and Mercury. I would discount the possibility for life on any of the gas giants, because they are simply just gas balls. So this leaves some of the many frigid moons of saturn jupiter neptune and uranus. All the moons of these planets have been thuroughly explored from space, and not one shows evidence of an industrialized or advanced society that would be necessary for interplanetary exploration to be possible. You think there are cave men type creatures sending up rockets in space? Save us all time and do not make ridiculous claims such as this.

Finally, mr David. I quote you, "assuming ETs have eyes." Well, maybe they dont have eyes exactly like ours, but they MUST have some sort of analogous organ that percieves the electromagnetic spectrum, such as our visible light, radiation, X-rays or UV light. Given, some terrestrial animals have sensors or antennae instead of eyes, but if that were the case, how would they even know there were stars in the sky to explore? If there were aliens to come here, they would thru some means HAVE to have means to percieve the electromagnetic spectrum, which ALL travels at the speed of light, and therefore would be subject to the same scenario that i explained above.

I hope this was helpful, i would like to hear back from you all.

lluminati3/17/2004 3:42:09 PM

"You think there are cavemen like creatures sending up rockets into space"? Im sorry but I honestly dont understand what you mean even if that was sarcasam.

So you say the moons of Jupiter have been THROUGHLY EXPLORED? Well we must be getting different info, because last time I checked NASA doesnt even have basic pictures of all the moons of Jupiter. The MOONS of Jupiter arent gas giants. The only planets we have seen the surface of is OUR MOON AND MARS. The SURFACE pictures is the only way to tell if theres life on these planets.

Who even says that a lifeform needs the sun as energy? Many plants and large intelligent sea creatures dont need sunlight. They live so deep under the ocean where there isnt ANY SUNLIGHT.

So you admit that aliens dont need lightspeed to come here? Dont than you think its more likely that they actually are here?

Don let me ask you this, If we find just microscopic life on MARs within the next few months, Doesnt that mean our human existence is a mere statistic and that there IS DEFINITLY INTELLIGENT LIFE ON OTHER PLANETS? Even you have to answer this honestly.

You are so sure at what you say when time and time again science has rewritten and refined itself on the basis of new developments and insight. For the longest time scientist said that we couldnt break the speed of sound and alot of things that you claim cant be done.

Dont you think science is still early in its learning and continue to refine and rewrite itself? Unless you are a physicist with a PHD you are not educated enough to make such assertions. Neither is anyone here I admit but the way you talk you sound so sure about what you say like its fact.

Nothing is impossible. Through mass amounts of time scientist go through RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CYCLES. It is found that anything is possible through doing this.

I dont believe that you know ALREADY HOW ADVANCED OUR TECHNOLOGHY IS. Right now the Army is working on ways to make our soliders INVISIBLE. Cmpletely invisible to the human eye. I dont think they would spend billions of dollars to do this if they thought it wouldnt work.

So IF you agree that aliens dont need lightspeed to cme here, than Doesnt it up the chances in your mind that they are here now?

Dan3/17/2004 4:46:39 PM

The nearest star is 4 x 1017 meters away, and the current estimated size for the entire universe is greater than that by ten orders of magnitude or so (about 1026 meters). For a long time the hope of space travel has been left almost entirely in the hands of the science fiction writers. Yet with God there are invariably hidden truths waiting to be discovered that make the best that men can imagine seem like kindergarten.

Newtonian mechanics imposes no maximum upper limit to attainable velocities in the universe, but Einstein's relativity theory does. As charged particles are pushed up near the present speed of light they grow heavier and more and more energy input is required to gain a smaller and smaller increment of increased velocity. At the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC), near where I live, electrons injected in the accelerator reach 99.999% of the velocity of light in the first few feet of travel, and then they ride traveling radio waves for two miles down a long evacuated pipe, gaining virtually no additional speed, but mostly acquiring mass (and therefore energy). There is no reason to doubt the highly successful and well-verified theory of relativity in this regard. One can point to countless examples of proven relativistic effects whenever charged particles are involved.

Physicist Hal Puthoff (1) has recently suggested that the ability of a spacecraft to modify the properties of space in its immediate vicinity could allow it to travel faster than light. This is because the speed of light is simply a measure of two properties of the medium of space, or the vacuum, permeability and permittivity. It has been tacitly assumed by some theoreticians that the speed of light might be a measure not only of the electrical properties of space, but also the mechanical properties of space as well. It turns out now that this is probably not the case!

An even very more exciting possibility has now come into the light. It has long been known that gravitational forces apparently act instantaneously over the entire universe. Why this should be so is simply glossed over and ignored in every generation of physics classes and in countless technical papers. One way to understand this is to consider what is called "the classical aberration of light"--which was discovered by Bradley in 1728. In fact, aberration data became one of the early methods for measuring the speed of light. Light from the sun requires 8.3 minutes to travel from the sun to the earth during which time the sun and the earth have moved as much as 20 arc seconds with respect to each other. Similarly light from the stars arrives at an angle which can be as much as 20 arc seconds because the earth is moving with respect to the stars. It is by carefully measuring these aberration angles, and knowing the relatively velocities involved, that Bradley made excellent and trustworthy measurements of the velocity of light 250 years ago.

However, during the time interval it takes light to travel from the sun to the earth, the sun and the earth have kept in touch with each other "instantaneously"--or at least very much faster than c! In fact every mass in the universe communicates with all other masses in the universe in a time frame that makes the present speed of light seem like the velocity of molasses on a cold day!

Astronomer Tom Flandern has recently detailed all the evidence that shows that gravitational forces, unlike light, operate with no measurable aberration! (2) But Van Flandern shows that there are sound reasons for believing that the "speed of gravity" is not infinite. By carefully studying the observable data Van Flandern now concludes that the speed of gravity is greater than or equal to the present speed of light by a factor of 2 x 1010. This velocity (6 x 1018 meters per second) turns out to be just below Barry Setterfield's latest estimate of the speed of light everywhere in the universe on Day Two of creation week! Setterfield arrives at this initial velocity of light on the basis of the maximum observed Hubble constant which gives an initial value of c turns out to be 2.54 x 1010 times the present value. (3) Since creation week the diameter of the universe has been constant (a static universe) and the speed of light has dropped precipitously to its present value--following decay curves we can now piece together with some confidence based on (a) measured values of c for the last 300 years, (b) corrections to known radioactive decay dates which go back to approximately 2000 BC, and (c) the observed quantization of the red shift of light from distant galaxies for the time period from creation to about the time of Abraham.

As the universe aged, the free space permittivity and permeability increased and c decreased--but the velocity of gravity may not be tied to the permittivity and permeability of free space! If this the case the velocity of gravity stayed at the original velocity of c. If we can produce a propulsion system based on gravitational principles rather than electromagnetic or chemical ones, we could travel at absolutely enormous speeds--we could hope to push a space craft anywhere in the universe, very literally at warp speeds beyond what even the Starship Enterprise could produce!

By the way, this discussion solely relates to the physical part of the created universe. For now we must defer discussion about how angels travel and communicate--they are spiritual beings. And we must postpone speculation about what we followers of Jesus the Lord may find ourselves capable of doing when we don our new resurrection bodies (those bodies are, after all, "not of this creation"--but spiritual bodies--see 1 Corinthians 15).

If Van Flandern and Setterfield are correct, space travel may indeed be just around the corner! A fringe benefit is that we may at last have clues to help us begin to understand the well-documented behavior of countless UFOs whose velocity and acceleration behavior has thus far defied explanation by conventional physics.

lluminati3/17/2004 5:11:40 PM

You talk about angels and science. The two dont go together but your ability to refer to angels lastly in your post surprised me. If we know all of this and you SOUND VERY SMART and I consider myself smart as well but you sound like you know a real lot about theories and physics, then Where would our scientist start if we were to make a spacecraft that can travel at these speeds were talking about?

Wouldnt we need other types of atomic elements not found or Earth or to make artificial elements with different properties? What effects if any would have to be overcomed on the human body? Please tell me more.

Don Tago3/17/2004 6:19:18 PM

Mr Dan,

at first i was very much taken in by your post. But as i was reading it, i was thinking firstly, that your punctuation, grammar and spelling were FLAWLESS to say the least, secondly, i felt you were diverging from the topic at hand. So i was thinking, you know, i bet whoever posted this simply copied it from somewhere on the net. So i did a search for a few keywords from your post and guess what.....It turns out Mr Dan copied one of the essays of Lamber Dolphin, a renouned physicist.

Im sorry illuminati, it turns out Dan isnt as smart as you thought he was. He is good at trying to decieve and mislead people though. The essay i admit was very good. However, it did not address any of the problems that i purposed. Hopefully, Mr Dan will write from his own experience and knowledge next time, rather than trying to take credit for someone elses work.

Mr illuminati, i will respond to your post directly...

lluminati3/17/2004 6:29:40 PM

LOL THANKS ALOT. Geez I would have never suspected because theres alot of smart people that come and go on these boards. I was starting to think he was from MIT lol.